According to the Swedish speaker manufacturer Audio Pro's sustainability report for 2023, the reuse rate of returned speakers handed over to GIAB Returhuset for the purpose of reuse or recycling has risen to 96.4%.
During the past four years, the Swedish speaker manufacturer Audio Pro has had a collaboration with a company called GIAB Returhuset, specialized in refurbishing consumer electronics. The aim is to reuse or recycle as many as possible of the products that are returned to the company. The reason for these returns varies, it might be products that have been returned due to customers simply changed their minds regarding their purchase. It can also be products that have been damaged during transport or are otherwise defective.
To minimize the amount of waste and strive towards sustainable consumption, Audio Pro and GIAB have tried to find methods to use these returned speakers in a resource-efficient way. Jens Henriksen, CCO at Audio Pro says, "It is not a straight-forward success story to find the best methods in how to carry out this work. Sometimes it works well, sometimes it works not so well. But we believe that persistence is the only way forward. We learn more and more every year, and we hope in the long run to be able to reuse even more products.”
At GIAB, specific methods are used to make use of the returned speakers, including repairing broken speakers and restoring them to sellable condition. Or in some cases maybe just a simple quality review of speakers that may not even have been out of their box at arrival with the customer, but still can no longer be sold as a new product, after product return.
In 2023, the amount of carbon dioxide savings fell compared to the previous year, which to some extent is due to the calculation methods have been developed and refined as GIAB's environmental work advances and standards both nationally and within the EU increase their requirements in terms of how environmental savings should be calculated. "But we can proudly state that even though carbon dioxide savings have fallen, we have increased our recycling rate to a whopping 96.4%. This means that out of all products returned, only 3.6% are sent for recycling, all other products, more than 96 percent of the products, go back into the flow and end up with a new consumer. We think this is absolutely fantastic, says Jens Henriksen.
"But still there is no time to sit back and relax. We continue our work to increase our climate savings and invest in increasing our carbon dioxide savings yet again, even if the calculation requirements keep getting tougher. The last few years have taught us that development might be two steps forward and one step back, but with a lot of determination and patience we should most likely end up where we want, concludes Jens Henriksen.
